Law-regulation-policy

Opening Parliament: A website dedicated to opening parliamentary transactions to citizen engagement. Opening Parliament is a network of civil society organisations that are working towards opening parliamentary procedures and proceedings to public scrutiny with innovative use of technology.

Political Finance Database | International IDEA: The political finance database provides a breakdown of different laws relating to public finance, and it allows us to identify specific texts across laws based on region or a topic.

LegisPro Web by Xcential: The tool can be used to crate XML mark ups based on Akoma Ntoso format for legislations. The mark-ups are essential for comparing legislations and analyzing them with the use of technology.

Lessons from Michigan: David Eaves writes about the government of Michigan initiative to create an innovation fund to create software useful to the government through collaborative projects that involve public, private and not-for profit organizations. He laments at the same time that the executive order does not require the software to be made open source, even though the government is paying for the creation of the software. Incidentally, I had a conversation with a former Principal Secretary for Municipalities in the undivided Andhra Pradesh (this was in early 2014). He mentioned that they had given a contract to a firm to develop a software for monitoring the collection […]

David Eaves on technology, government and other topics: Prolific writer on the use of technology in government covering issues such as innovation, transparency, open data, etc.

National Democratic Institute | NDI: NDI is a “nonprofit, nonpartisan organization working to support and strengthen democratic institutions worldwide through citizen participation, openness and accountability in government”. NDI has several leading projects in the intersection of technology and democracy.

After winning right to spend, political groups fight for secrecy – latimes.com: This article by the LA Times argues that large private donors in the US are making an argument to keep details about their political funding a secret, arguing that privacy (read secrecy) is democratic.

The Missing Open Data Policy – Sunlight Foundation: Sunlight Foundation argues that the open data policies so far discuss the format in which information should be released, but do not provide a overview on what information should be released in open data format. The article discusses some ways of regulating this.

Making open data real: A public consultation: Outlines some of the challenges in making making public sector information available in the ‘open data spirit’. It discusses the current set of laws in the UK and EU that govern open data related issues, and outlines some of the challenges for future discussion.

Budapest Convention on Cybercrime: One of the conventions on governing the internet relating to cybercrime.

Cyberspace Policy Review by The White House: Documents on cyber space policy of the US government.

Rating of RTI laws around the world: This page contains information about a ranking of countries based on the strength of the right to information Law. Serbia has the highest ranking followed closely by India. Sweden, the first country to legislate the right to information, falls very low in the list.

Center for Democracy & Technology: It is “a non-profit public interest organization working to keep the Internet open, innovative, and free”.

Access Denied: The Practice and Policy of Global Internet Filtering by OpenNet Initiative: “Many countries around the world block or filter Internet content, denying access to information–often about politics, but also relating to sexuality, culture, or religion – that they deem too sensitive for ordinary citizens. Access Denied documents and analyzes Internet filtering practices in over three dozen countries, offering the first rigorously conducted study of this accelerating trend”.

Clean Slate Design for the Internet: Our mission is to reinvent Internet infrastructure and services by creating platforms for innovations in networking, computing, and storage and making them available to research and user communities with emphasis on mobile computing.

Information Warfare Monitor | Tracking Cyberpower: The Information Warfare Monitor is an advanced research activity tracking the emergence of cyberspace as a strategic domain.

Chilling Effects Clearinghouse: The Chilling Effects Clearinghouse collects and analyzes legal complaints about online activity, helping Internet users to know their rights and understand the law. Chilling Effects welcomes submission of letters from individuals and from Internet service providers and hosts. These submissions enable us to study the prevalence of legal threats and allow Internet users to see the source of content removals.

Health Information of India: Health statistics for India.

Oxford internet institute webcasts: Webcasts of events at Oxford internet institute

Corporate Watch UK: small independent not-for-profit research and publishing group which undertakes research on the social and environmental impact of large corporations, particularly multinationals